Wittgenstein and Hegel on Art and the Everyday
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Gabriele Tomasi
Abstract
This chapter explores the intersection of art and the everyday through the philosophical lenses of Wittgenstein and Hegel. Wittgenstein’s concept of viewing life ‘from outside’ correlates with an ‘antitheatrical’ (Michael Fried) artistic stance that reveals the aesthetic value of the ‘everyday’, exemplified in Jeff Wall’s masterpiece Morning Cleaning (1999). The chapter delves deeper into this perspective by linking it with William Wordsworth’s ideas on the creative imagination’s role in reshaping everyday experiences. Additionally, it discusses Hegel’s analysis of seventeenth-century Dutch painting to illustrate how these artists aesthetically transformed the everyday. However, Hegel’s insights also hint at a potential issue: the dependence of this transformation on a pre-existing framework of value, such as religion, which raises questions about art’s ability to genuinely transmute the everyday or if it merely superimposes meaning onto it. This examination highlights the complexities of interpreting the everyday through art without a traditional value system.
Abstract
This chapter explores the intersection of art and the everyday through the philosophical lenses of Wittgenstein and Hegel. Wittgenstein’s concept of viewing life ‘from outside’ correlates with an ‘antitheatrical’ (Michael Fried) artistic stance that reveals the aesthetic value of the ‘everyday’, exemplified in Jeff Wall’s masterpiece Morning Cleaning (1999). The chapter delves deeper into this perspective by linking it with William Wordsworth’s ideas on the creative imagination’s role in reshaping everyday experiences. Additionally, it discusses Hegel’s analysis of seventeenth-century Dutch painting to illustrate how these artists aesthetically transformed the everyday. However, Hegel’s insights also hint at a potential issue: the dependence of this transformation on a pre-existing framework of value, such as religion, which raises questions about art’s ability to genuinely transmute the everyday or if it merely superimposes meaning onto it. This examination highlights the complexities of interpreting the everyday through art without a traditional value system.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations of Wittgenstein’s Works IX
- Notes on Authors XI
- Introduction: Wittgenstein and Classical German Philosophy – Logic, Language, Life 1
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I Logic
- Differences in Form, Identities in Content – Wittgenstein and Hegel on Two Complementary Aspects of Meaning 13
- What Might Hegel and Wittgenstein Have Seen in Goethe’s Colour Theory? 35
- Shining and Showing 53
- Two Faces of Contradiction 81
- Infinity as the Form of the Finite: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Remarks, XII and the Notion of the Infinite in the Critique of Pure Reason 101
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II Language
- Talking is Lying: On One Suspicious Metaphor 125
- Rhetoric, Negativity, and Philosophy of Language – Hegel’s Sophists as Early Wittgensteinians 137
- Reflections on Rule-Following 147
- Wittgenstein’s Übersichtliche Darstellung and Hegel’s Speculative Philosophy 167
- Wittgenstein and Schlegel on Forms of Life: Talking To or Past Each Other 183
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III Life
- Hegel, the Pragmatic Turn, and the Later Wittgenstein 201
- Following the Rule Without Interpreting It? – Gadamarian and Kantian Revision of Brandom’s Solution to the Wittgensteinian Problem 213
- Following a Rule Blindly: Hegel and Wittgenstein on the Immediacy of Habit 225
- Wittgenstein and Critical Theory – From ‘Sub Specie Aeterni’ to the ‘Entanglement in Our Rules’ – Wittgenstein, Adorno, Marx 255
- Wittgenstein and Hegel on Art and the Everyday 277
- Subject Index 297
- Person Index 307
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- List of Abbreviations of Wittgenstein’s Works IX
- Notes on Authors XI
- Introduction: Wittgenstein and Classical German Philosophy – Logic, Language, Life 1
-
I Logic
- Differences in Form, Identities in Content – Wittgenstein and Hegel on Two Complementary Aspects of Meaning 13
- What Might Hegel and Wittgenstein Have Seen in Goethe’s Colour Theory? 35
- Shining and Showing 53
- Two Faces of Contradiction 81
- Infinity as the Form of the Finite: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Remarks, XII and the Notion of the Infinite in the Critique of Pure Reason 101
-
II Language
- Talking is Lying: On One Suspicious Metaphor 125
- Rhetoric, Negativity, and Philosophy of Language – Hegel’s Sophists as Early Wittgensteinians 137
- Reflections on Rule-Following 147
- Wittgenstein’s Übersichtliche Darstellung and Hegel’s Speculative Philosophy 167
- Wittgenstein and Schlegel on Forms of Life: Talking To or Past Each Other 183
-
III Life
- Hegel, the Pragmatic Turn, and the Later Wittgenstein 201
- Following the Rule Without Interpreting It? – Gadamarian and Kantian Revision of Brandom’s Solution to the Wittgensteinian Problem 213
- Following a Rule Blindly: Hegel and Wittgenstein on the Immediacy of Habit 225
- Wittgenstein and Critical Theory – From ‘Sub Specie Aeterni’ to the ‘Entanglement in Our Rules’ – Wittgenstein, Adorno, Marx 255
- Wittgenstein and Hegel on Art and the Everyday 277
- Subject Index 297
- Person Index 307
